Imagine my delight when our Coast fax machine spit out an incoming press release with the following headline: “Eating More – Best Way to Lose Weight.” After posting the release to my bulletin board (feel free to stop by my office so I can prove to you that I’m telling the truth), I decided to test that theory with visits to McDonald’s for breakfast and Wendy’s and Taco Bell for lunch. Yep, three fast food meals in one week. That might be a personal record. (At least I hope it’s a personal record!) Since during the same week, Justine was on a road trip to Arizona, I’m guessing her week may have been similar to mine.

Clearly, I haven’t quite gotten back into the routine. I did manage to work out five days in a row after our last post, including a long hike/climb on Easter Sunday, which I was happy to learn from the scale later that week that the hike helped work off my Easter buffet brunch. But I haven’t managed to get back into an eating routine that will help me get to the next weight-loss level I’m targeting. And I refuse to go on a “diet” because my intention with this fitness challenge is to change my lifestyle permanently. In the past, my attempts to lose weight with Atkins or Weight Watchers always ended well, but the point is that they ended. As in: They ended with a weight loss and when I stopped whatever program I was doing, I gained the weight back. This time, I’ve gone a little overboard in my thinking that because this is a lifestyle change, I can simply continue eating like I do and the workouts will compensate. That has helped me maintain my current weight, but isn’t helping me lose additional weight.

So my next goal is to stop the fast food madness and concentrate on smaller, more frequent meals (which was the point of the aforementioned press release). This small and realistic goal should get me back into the routine so that my eating and exercise – in combination – put me back on the road to success.